Home » Plants & Animals » Rose Gardening » How to Deadhead Roses to Encourage Repeat Blooming and Reduce Insect Infestation

How to Deadhead Roses to Encourage Repeat Blooming and Reduce Insect Infestation

© Mark Whitelaw

Deadheading , the removal of spent blossoms with the aim of forcing a plant to rebloom, is a technique for tricking a plant into thinking it has failed to reproduce. By removing the blossom before it has had a chance to fully develop a fruit, the plant sends out regrowth hormones, produces a new bloom, and tries again.

Benefits of Deadheading Roses

Deadheading remontant (repeat-blooming) roses will it conserve plant energy, produce more blooms, and remove hiding places and food for garden pests. It may even improve air circulation, reducing the potential for fungal diseases.

Obviously, deadheading only works on plants that have the capability to rebloom. Many of our roses do not have the capability to rebloom. If hips are not desired, then deadheading may be an option to reduce infestation of insects that prefer decaying plant material. Critters particularly fond of spent roses and their fallen petals include earwigs, sow and pill bugs, thrips, and cucumber beetles.

Where to Cut Your Roses when Deadheading

All cuts are best made at an angle away from, and slightly above, the node. (If cane boring mini-wasps are a problem, you may wish to seal the cut with white glue or a drop of orange shellac. Otherwise, the plant should seal its own cut within a few minutes.) Stem growth will begin from the nodes nearest to the cut.

Barring genetic mutations and certain viral diseases, a bloom stem can be no larger in diameter than the stem from which it grows. Furthermore, the subsequent blooms will be proportionate in size to the stem from which they emerge. This means the further down the stem you cut, the larger the bloom stem and subsequent bud(s) will become, and the longer it will take for the rose to rebloom.

If your rose produces a cluster of blooms, you may want to deadhead further back on the stem. If you are growing a Hybrid Tea and religiously disbud, then deadheading further down the stem should be tempered with how large you expect the second bloom to become and how soon you want the rose to recycle.

Many antique and Old Garden roses bloom in clusters from multiple nodes near the terminus of the cane. In this case, trimming the spent clusters rather than finding the "true leaf" should be your focus. The secondary clusters, those blooming below the terminal cluster, will still be blooming when the primary cluster has finished. After all the clusters have finished blooming, the stem can be trimmed further down, but regrowth will require a bit more time to produce a second flush.

The copyright of the article How to Deadhead Roses to Encourage Repeat Blooming and Reduce Insect Infestation in Rose Gardening is owned by . Permission to republish How to Deadhead Roses to Encourage Repeat Blooming and Reduce Insect Infestation in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.